


Blow Into A Horse’s Nostrils and He is Dedicated to You for Life

by OrionLady



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015), The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bombs, Bromance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epic Friendship, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Trust, Major Character Injury, Protectiveness, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-11-02 09:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20701244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrionLady/pseuds/OrionLady
Summary: What does it take for two nations to crumble? For two best friends to want to kill each other? Apparently one whole minute in a Parisian back alley. Napoleon loses sight of him for sixty seconds and the world ends.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Let's play a game called 'everyone spot the horse trainer.' Good job - it's me! Hope you enjoy.
> 
> Listening/Soundtrack inspiration for the piece: “What Makes a Man” ~ City and Colour

'I can hear my train comin'  
Now I'm runnin' for my life  
What makes a man walk  
Away from his mind?'

"What Makes a Man" ~ City and Colour

The two cafes were less than ten feet away across the Paris cobblestone _la route de marche_. 

One cafe sold the best espresso mousse cakes in the city and the other specialized in banana eclairs—the only banana eclairs this side of the Seine. Awnings rustled in the late September breeze. Tiny white cups were sipped at dainty tables. Newspapers read. None of the morning patrons seemed in a hurry.

One man, sitting alone, took off his sunglasses. They matched his dark shock of hair. He downed his coffee and waved to the waiter for another. 

“No better than muddy water,” said a voice in the dark haired man’s ear.

The man’s chin tipped to his chest in a futile effort to hide the tiniest of grins. 

“I suppose you’d prefer vodka,” he softly replied. His lips hardly moved. His earpiece crackled with a laugh.

The dark haired man suddenly frowned. “I don’t like that I cannot see you.”

A pause. Hesitant and wobbling. The dark haired man stiffened, preparing to rise to his feet. Something warning, dangerous flashed in his eyes.

“Then you shouldn’t have put in coffee breaks as part of the plan, Yankee.”

Napoleon rolled his eyes. “We are in France, you ungrateful Slav. We can’t _not _try the cafes.”

After a tense minute, a dazzle of honey brown hair caught Napoleon’s eyes through the weave of people. His shoulders—at last—dipped away from his ears. He exhaled a long breath. 

Some desperate Parisian waved for a taxi. Illya tracked her with his eyes before sitting. Napoleon didn’t see his partner’s lips move but his voice filtered into Napoleon’s left ear. 

“Is waste of time. I told you. Our councilman could get his coffee anywhere.”

“Yet only _your_ cafe sells banana eclairs, like the ones in Faivre’s note,” said Napoleon, languid. 

“It could have been code.”

Napoleon quirked a brow. Even across the route, Illya saw it and frowned. Their radio silence continued, broken only by the occasional sip of coffee. Or, in Illya’s case, hot cocoa. 

When Napoleon had first discovered this treasured indulgence of the tacit Russian, he thought it a ruse, a “pull of the leg” as Kuryakin called it. Only a tight flush all the way up to Illya’s ears convinced a truly speechless Napoleon. That blush was better than a CIA polygraph.

Fondness made Napoleon smile, watching Illya use his spoon to scoop cane sugar cocoa grinds at the bottom of the cup. 

People didn’t understand that those who faced the worst of life’s boundaries needed the most child-like relief. Sure, people at the office thought he and Illya were strange. That was okay. Life was strange. It was the only way either man enjoyed it.

Leaning back to soak the sun, Napoleon’s eyes wandered over female patrons. Their bronzy skin was only complimented by autumn dresses. Thankfully short hemlines were in this year. Perhaps later, once the crooked councilman Faivre and his pocket full of nuclear bribes was caught, he could…

The sharp clatter of a spoon startled Napoleon. He physically jolted. His eyes scanned the opposite café. So close. Only ten feet away. 

Completely void of a lanky Russian.

Napoleon fought the urge to jump into action. Instead, he rose at a sedate pace and unbuttoned the navy blazer at his waist. His other hand placed a few coins on the table. The revolver pressed against his ribs—a beacon of strength.

With a saunter, he ambled down the cobbles.

“Illya?”

Silence.

“Kuryakin, you know we’ve talked about this dashing off thing. Remember I threatened you with a leash...Illya?”

Silence would have been welcome compared to the sudden, choked gasp in Napoleon’s ear. His heart skipped like a rock on an ice pond.

“Illya? Illya!”

A muffled man’s voice, unfamiliar and faint in reply to Kuryakin’s gasp, locked Napoleon’s joints. Spine rigid, he jogged into Paris’ back alleys. The Russian couldn’t have gone far. Less than three minutes had passed. 

“Illya? Answer me.”

At first Napoleon thought the sudden harsh breathing was just in his ear.

Then he turned a corner.

“Kuryakin.” Napoleon sagged. His hair and tie sat askew, but he only had eyes for Illya. “What in the Queen’s name were you thinking? No contact, no explanation. You just go running off on your own like a love addled rookie! Come on, the food wasn’t that bad.”

Napoleon waved his hands at Illya’s back during this debacle. He took solace—hidden under a flare of irritation—in the fact Kuryakin was unharmed. No blood stains. The man stood by his own willpower. No inconvenient passing out.

Only Illya’s hands shook.

Napoleon sobered immediately. He rounded his partner’s shoulders.

“Illya?”

A cursory scan of the alley revealed nothing. Certainly nothing to warrant anger. In fact, Illya’s whole body trembled. Napoleon wondered if he should brace himself for a punch. 

“Was Faivre at the café? You spotted him and gave chase?”

Grey faced, eyes ahead, Illya nodded once. A jerky motion. Sweat beaded on the man’s upper lip. He had the luster of ice freshly heated, waxy and unmoving.

Napoleon bit his lip. 

It was unheard of for Kuryakin to allow a suspect to escape by so narrow a margin. This was their final lead. This stake out wouldn’t work twice. Illya shivered as if he’d heard Napoleon’s thought.

Illya’s limbs remained taut, a marble statue in an earthquake. Solo’s eyes narrowed, then widened. 

“Oh.” Napoleon blinked very fast. He sucked in a rushed breath. “_Oh. _Oh, I...”

It was only now, a full two hundred seconds after he’d found his partner, that he recognized the emotion on Illya’s face. It was staggering. The first time Napoleon had ever truly seen this one. 

“Oh,” said Napoleon in a gentle tone, because that’s the only word his brain delivered at first. “It’s alright, Illya. There’s nothing to fear.”

He hoped the empty words masked how floored he was by the outright, blank terror on Illya’s features. The Russian looked gaunt. Tremors continued to assault his limbs. Napoleon’s mind raced.

What would have caused this but not injure? 

He dared to place a warm hand on Illya’s shoulder, almost at the nape of his neck. 

Illya jerked as if slapped. He darted quickly away. His eyes burned at Napoleon with some emotion the man couldn’t name. Illya’s eyebrows lowered, one after the other, and his skin bulged with an effort to wrestle back the emotion into something neutral. It was messy and ill executed and Napoleon couldn’t help but stare. 

“Sorry,” said Illya, “for losing Faivre.”

“It’s fine,” said Napoleon. And under different circumstances he would have laughed at such a bald faced lie.

Both now wore terribly casual expressions, so laissez faire it felt worse than a funeral. Napoleon’s chest squeezed. 

“Come on,” Illya mumbled. “We go home now.”

They made it back to their fifth floor apartment before the rain hit. It darkened the sky earlier than normal. The pair shuffled about in a choreographed ritual, born of endless assignments together.

They ignored a beep on the radio—UNCLE looking for a report of the day’s stake. Neither bothered with the lights. They ate cold ham in silence and cleaned up in silence. Napoleon kept a sharp eye on his friend. 

At last he couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Dear Peril, are you quite yourself? What happened back there?”

Illya stopped putting away the dishes with his back to Solo. A mirror of only hours before in the alley. Something about the curl of his shoulder looked small, reminding Napoleon that Illya’s anger fooled people—including Solo—into thinking him bigger than he was.

A disturbing revelation yawned open in Napoleon’s mind, the seed of a thought…that maybe all of Illya’s anger wasn’t anger at all—

A robotic voice filled the stale air. “Go to sleep, Cowboy.”

But Solo couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried to later that night. Neither could Illya. Napoleon listened to his partner across the hall, how he muttered in dialects even Napoleon didn’t know.

His own words echoed back to him:

_“I don’t like that I cannot see you.”_

* * *

“Dang it, Solo!”

Napoleon snuck a look back at his partner and grinned. Sweat dripped off Illya’s brow. Sweat teased from his body too.

Sweat and pearls.

The agents sprinted for their lives past fluffy mattresses and women clutching handbags to their chests. Mirrors where Solo drank in every inch of his ruby lips and smoky eyes. And emerald cocktail dress.

“You couldn’t have picked a better cover?” Kuryakin continued to rant.

Napoleon blinked. “No, I couldn’t.”

“Solo!”

A freight train slammed Napoleon’s ribs in time to blast him away from a bullet’s trajectory.

“Stupid cowboy,” said Illya. But his eyes seeped worry. Worry and that terrified something that haunted Napoleon’s dreams. That element of wounded fear that hadn’t fully left his face since the alley in France.

The Russian suddenly tripped over his pooling gown hemline. Napoleon grabbed him on the descent.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Napoleon.

“Though this wouldn’t have happened if we’d posed as tailors like I proposed.”

Napoleon rolled his eyes. “Don’t mention that either.”

The pair darted across scent filled perfume aisles, through racks of sweaters. Solo flung off heavy layers of pearls and withdrew a hand gun from his purse. He threw the clutch away. Turning back, Napoleon fired off two rounds. One of Faivre’s men jolted backwards.

“Come on! The stairs!”

Napoleon obeyed Illya’s lead instantly. They took the stairs nearly three at a time. A miraculous feat in dresses and drag heels. Napoleon was almost sorry nobody was around to see it.

Framed by Manhattan streets, the department store’s giant “M” loomed through the front windows.

Solo only noticed this fact because a sniper sat on it. The rifle’s barrel narrowed on Kuryakin’s golden head. Illya didn’t even notice.

Napoleon’s eyes widened. There was nothing for it—

He jumped the last five stairs.

Instead of the dress, like Napoleon aimed for, he got a fistful of Illya’s hair. They’d ditched the ladies’ wigs minutes earlier so the Russian’s caramel locks were soft and frazzled to the touch.

Napoleon yanked it with all his might. Onto a display of stuffed animals. The sniper’s round whistled, a lover’s whisper, along Illya’s ear. The Russian cried out. Napoleon’s heart seized.

They landed in a heap of plush jungle animals.

Napoleon’s hands scrabbled all over the Russian and his bleeding ear. He trembled violently.

Illya shot up immediately. “You saved me. You…you didn’t let me get shot!”

Napoleon froze. His chest constricted for an entirely different reason. There wasn’t even a sarcastic retort ready on his lips for such a declaration. The surprise in Illya’s voice…the confusion.

And even in the chaos, both men stopped, kneeling in fleece lions and monkeys.

For once, Napoleon studied his friend’s face and couldn’t even begin to read it. He felt he’d misplaced a keystone and now the tower of their bond crumbled around him. Kuryakin gazed back, winded, spiced with something vulnerable.

_What did I miss?_

Napoleon’s mouth opened but no sound came out. Illya barely breathed.

“Let’s go, Peril,” Napoleon finally said. He swallowed the questions and ignored when Illya skittered away from his touch. “You’ll never win Macy’s pageant with a bleeding ear.”

Only then, at the poor attempt at humour, did sound return. Napoleon was slow to move. He still reeled. Dizzy from Illya’s words. From the injured tone that should never come out of the Russian’s mouth.

Kuryakin hauled Napoleon the rest of the way to the front doors.

“Did you get Mrs. Faivre’s address?” Napoleon finally thought to ask.

Illya grunted.

“Good,” said Napoleon. “Then dressing up like a woman wasn’t a total waste.”

Cops raced onto the scene—arresting the sniper—just as the two agents slipped into a pub across the street. Faivre’s men were soon cuffed, guns taken, and complaining. New Yorkers paid no attention to the two men in drag.

Napoleon and Illya ducked into the pub bathroom to remove their makeup. Their street clothes were still there, tucked behind the broken toilet. They cleaned and changed in strange quiet.

“Faivre’s men will be released. Diplomatic ties and all that,” said Illya, eyes on the floor.

Napoleon cleared his throat. “By then we’ll have enough to take Faivre down. We stopped the nuclear assault on Paris, but there’s no proof he was behind it. This is our last lead.”

Illya didn’t answer. He buttoned his shirt, then his wool blazer. Napoleon looped his own pristine tie around itself.

When he glanced up, Illya held a wad of crimson paper towel to his right ear. He muttered in his mother tongue.

“We don’t have bandages,” Napoleon answered back in Russian.

Illya’s eyes snapped to Napoleon’s in the mirror.

_Two days_, Solo thought. _This is the first real eye contact in two days. Certainly since Faivre chased us all the way to New York._

Illya winced and the moment broke.

“Here.” Napoleon tutted, in English this time. “Let me keep the compress on—”

“Don’t!” Illya jumped away from Napoleon’s touch. His eyes wide.

Not a hint of anger on his face.

Napoleon desperately searched for it. Tried to find relief in the familiarity of Kuryakin’s temper. Shaking fists, red cheeks, anything.

Only mistrust shone back at Napoleon.

Napoleon had entertained a lot of possibilities about what Faivre did to Illya, many of them unsavory and most of them centering around some sort of bodily harassment. This, though…this blew all of it out of the water.

_He’s not afraid of men or touch. _

_He’s afraid of _me.

“What did Faivre do to you?” Solo whispered. “That day in the alley?”

Illya’s eyes flickered.

“You knew,” Napoleon said in an awed tone. “You knew there was a sniper in the window and you didn’t do a thing about it. What has he done to you, Illya?”

The Russian’s nose wrinkled in frustration. “Time is short, Cowboy. We must move.”

Still—he didn’t budge, a caged animal against the sink, until Napoleon stepped out of arm’s reach of the door.

Napoleon covered his shaking lips with a shaking hand.


	2. Chapter 2

'I can feel the wind blowin'  
It shakes the trees and the power lines.  
What makes a man spend his whole life in disguise?  
I think I know,  
I think I might know.'

"What Makes a Man" ~ City and Colour

One hour later, in an opulent, Northern section of the city, two men stepped from the shadows and knocked on a manor’s back door.

The grass was fresh, despite autumn temperatures. Its lush green made the men’s faded tweed hats pop out with obnoxious clarity. Grounds keepers and cooks walked home for the day. They departed with the setting sun.

Nobody noticed the smaller of both men hesitate before knocking on the back door. Nobody noticed the larger, dark haired man gaze not at the door but at his friend with earnest and worried eyes.

Nobody ever noticed them.

The back door swung open to reveal a dark kitchen. A butler appeared, carrying his coat.

“Oh thank the fates!” Napoleon exclaimed in an Irish accent. “We were hoping we weren’t too late to tell Faivre that his automobile is on fire!”

The butler dropped his things. “Monsieur Faivre! Monsieur!”

And just like that, Faivre could be seen racing out his own front door to a trail of smoke from the east side of the house.

Napoleon and Illya slipped into the still-swinging back door and up the stairs.

They found Madame Faivre exactly where they expected. She wiped stage makeup off with a shaking hand, staring at her reflection where she sat at the vanity mirror. Dots of glitter in her hair matched a stray one in Illya’s eyebrow. Napoleon hadn’t the heart or desire to thumb it away.

Napoleon pushed ahead so that he led the way and Illya didn’t fight him on it. Solo’s natural charm made him less intimidating, even if they were close in height.

“Madame Faivre?”

The aging woman swiveled on the bench, eyes wide.

Both men immediately hunched a little in an instinctive need to make themselves look smaller when they saw a discoloured patch on Helen Faivre’s cheek. Though over a week old, the bruise stood out in mottled green and mauve. It was ugly and the worst sort of statement piece.

“How do you know where I live?” she gasped out.

Napoleon’s face broke into a smile and he found it genuine, to the surprise of everyone present. “Pageant contestants make the best sources of information, I’ve learned.”

Faivre only squinted her eyes, confused, for a minute before her brows shot up in realization.

“Well,” she said, her smile weak but courageous, “For a pair of gentlemen you deserved those sixth and thirteenth place ribbons.”

Napoleon shot his partner an amused look.

Kuryakin shrugged. “You really do make a beautiful woman. I guess I just don’t cut it.”

“We can’t all be so ‘exotic’ as myself,” said Solo.

Illya would normally have smiled, maybe even chuckled, but all Napoleon got was a nod. It made him pale a little.

When Illya’s eyes again found Helen’s, she sighed. “You’re here about my husband, I assume?”

Napoleon fought to conceal his astonishment. “Of course, ma’am. But you sound like this isn’t the first time someone has approached you about your spouse’s…er…less savory activities.”

The woman nodded. She set down the washcloth, her whole posture defeated. “And all of the world’s governments offered me the same thing you are about to: that I can finally be free…get away from…But they always turn back on their word!”

Her eyes filled and she hid them with a shivering hand. 

What Kuryakin did next was Napoleon’s greatest shock of the day, even in competition with snipers and pageant strutting.

In an impulsive rush, like an eastern wind, Illya crouched at Helen’s side, her hand nestled in both of his. The Russian’s face was breathtaking, a work of art. So open that it felt like intruding to look at—fear and empathy and pain and a pinch around Illya’s eyes that spoke of infinite loss.

A single tear rolling down Kuryakin’s cheek almost made Napoleon pass out.

“No,” said Kuryakin. “Is not like that. I know what it is to be manipulated. We are here to _protect_ you, not use you.”

Solo didn’t dare to even breathe. He held it, turning steadily red in the face, and gazed with a strange longing at his partner.

“I promise,” said Illya, “That you will never be harmed, not while I stand guard. I will not lose…not again…”

The woman looked into Illya’s eyes for an endless moment. She seemed to shed twenty years as lines around her eyes smoothed and a flare of her nostrils spoke of understanding. Faivre squeezed Kuryakin’s hands back.

Napoleon finally sucked in a quiet breath, feeling like an intruder to Illya and Helen’s intimate stare off.

Their eyes were desperate, haunted, and filled with such determination that all of Monsieur Faivre’s men could not budge it.

At last Helen nodded. “For you, dear boy, I will do it.”

Illya said nothing. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the old woman’s cheek. It was chaste, a school boy’s action upon a teacher or mother, but Napoleon still felt he should look away.

_And I_, Napoleon vowed in his mind, _am here to protect you, precious oaf_.

* * *

Smoke. Tobacco ash. Steam from a rusted sink.

The coughing clicks of a phone being spun on its dial, again and again and again.

Those were the only sensations that penetrated Solo’s slice of the world. He manhandled a cup like a belligerent suspect, washing it for the fourth time in a row. Despite this, his face oozed utter calm. More placid than a bell hop’s.

He finally threw the cigarette into the tray. It was a terrible habit, picked up from a terrible man. At least, or so Napoleon consoled himself, he had better taste in cigarettes than Sanders.

“Yes, I know my code is not active any longer…Da, comrade…but the numerical check point is!”

Napoleon gave up on the dishes. He leaned on the sink, arms braced against it, and bowed his head. Kuryakin’s endless attempts to dial the right authorities—Russian, he presumed from the mixture of English and Russian conversation—had at last succeeded and now he sat arguing into the phone in the other room.

A thick manila envelope sat on the safe house’s kitchen table but neither man had gone through it. It contained Mrs. Faivre’s statement and a few records of her husband’s illegal nuclear affairs. Enough to bring him to UNCLE for questioning, certainly.

They would turn it over to Waverly in the morning and the case was over. Done. Out of their hands, now.

Solo’s heart beat faster.

_Done. Over._

“Spasibo. Da!” A hush overcame the sitting room and, in turn, the kitchen. Both men went mute from different emotions. Illya on account of being on hold and anticipation for an answer to whatever question plagued him. Napoleon because of his desperate need to not feel like a child.

_To understand how Faivre has wounded you, Peril._

Illya never willingly called his Russian handlers. Those times usually involved Waverly’s fierce looks and the offer to back Illya up if the “Ruskis” were being problematic.

Kuryakin had stared at Waverly for a long time after that one. As if he couldn’t decide whether to be insulted.

“Am I not a…‘Ruski?’” he had asked. 

Waverly had flapped his hand in an amused gesture. “Don’t be silly. You’re one of us now.”

Solo had tried to memorize Illya’s shocked, touched face.

Napoleon’s right hand clenched around the drying towel. That memory stung now.

“Da. I am still here…What is the word?” There was absolutely no further sound from Illya but Solo suddenly tensed.

Something in the air did a one-eighty. Super charged, like the air before a lightning strike.

Napoleon’s head shot up.

“…You’re sure? Positive? In the market, you say…” Illya made a choked noise Solo couldn’t even hope to interpret. “I…I will…I can’t believe…Da. I’ll be on next flight out.”

A clatter signalled unsteady hands hanging up the phone receiver. Napoleon listened to Kuryakin’s bedroom door slam and went over to it.

Solo was not a whimsical man by nature.

But he indulged himself, just this once, and placed a hand on the door. Splayed, trusting fingers and all.

There came a sudden thud from the other side of the door. Almost as if…as if Illya had indulged himself too.

“Illya?” Napoleon hated how pleading his tone came out. He swallowed. “Kuryakin? What are you doing?”

The tacit Russian was silent for so long that Solo doubted he’d answer. There was a rustle, like his head had lifted from its weary repose against the door.

“Packing,” said Illya. “I am packing. Go away.”

* * *

Napoleon’s face dropped of all emotion. His voice came out low and dry. “I think I have water in my ears. I hallucinated your response.”

Waverly’s hands were folded on his cluttered desk, smile pert as usual. But sympathy shone behind the large glasses.

“No, Mr. Solo. You heard me correctly. Mr. Kuryakin requested two weeks off to go to St. Petersburg, Russia. Hence his empty desk. He boards his flight in…” Waverly checked his watch. “Now, actually.”

“Time off? _Vacation_ time, no less?” Napoleon nose wrinkled. “Sir, you and I both know that’s a load of—”

“Napoleon.” It was this use of his first name that silenced him. Waverly stood, voice soft and eyes sadder. “I never said Illya took vacation.”

Napoleon blinked for a full minute. Then his lips parted and his face drained of colour.

“No,” he breathed.

Waverly nodded and if Napoleon didn’t know better, he’d say the man looked bright eyed. “I’m afraid so.”

“Who?”

Waverly bit his lip, a rare tell. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Sir, may I request—”

“It’s already approved,” said Waverly. “Go.”

Napoleon was out the door before Waverly sat back down.

* * *

Lanky Russians, as it turned out, were fast.

Napoleon had missed getting on the Russian’s flight but bought himself a ticket for another two hours later.

Luck was on his side—Illya had still been meeting with someone at the Kremlin when Napoleon arrived. Napoleon had watched from the shadow of the American embassy as his friend’s bright head of hair emerged from the Kremlin doors.

And then he’d promptly disappeared.

Napoleon now found himself spinning around on the sidewalk, trying to find wherever his partner had run off to. Several policemen in their black musher hats eyed the “Yankee” suspiciously yet passed without incident.

He sagged against a lamp post.

Shame welled up inside Solo.

_I don’t know where he lives…does he even live in the heart of the city? Another Russian city?_

Illya had certainly left on foot, not in a car. Within walking distance, then.

In a flash, Napoleon straightened. “I know where you are, Peril.”

It was a dingy thing, two floors of moldy carpets and men playing poker at the bar downstairs. But the two men had stayed here while on assignment once—

And it was within walking distance of the Kremlin.

Better yet, nobody ever asked questions at the _Plachushchiy Medved'_. The seedy motel was prized for discretion. Politicians didn’t dare stay there, so it was mainly the working class who utilized its plush yet dirty accommodations.

Stepping into the front lobby bar, Solo smiled at the familiar feeling of the room’s smoky, ship-like interior.

“Master Zolenko!”

Solo turned from his place at the front desk. A ruddy faced man walked over from the poker table, apron around his hips.

Solo tipped his head. “There’s the proprietor with no propriety!”

Kush winked at Napoleon. He switched to English for Napoleon’s sake, never fooled by their ‘two Ukrainian brothers on vacation’ act. “I was surprised when Comrade Kuryakin came in by himself. Looked peaky.”

Napoleon took a step back in surprise.

_Illya gave Kush his real name?_

The snowy haired innkeeper seemed to read Napoleon’s mind. “Fear not, Mister Zolenko, or whatever your real name is. Your identity and privacy are safe with me.”

And surprisingly, in this country with its ironclad fist and horrible justice system, Solo looked into the man’s eyes and believed him. He saw only an honest, homely empathy. Napoleon relaxed immediately.

“You want a room next to your bratishka?” asked Kush.

At the familial moniker, Napoleon paused.

Kush shrugged one shoulder. “No matter who you are, that’s true of you both. It is perhaps the most honest part of everything you ever told me about yourselves. You’re a good bratishka.”

Napoleon finally smiled a real smile. It felt like his first in decades. He reached over the front desk to shake Kush’s hand. The man nodded, eyes crinkling in a grin. He handed Solo a big brass key.

Just as Napoleon paid and dragged his bags up the stairs, the door across from his swung open.

Russian and American stared one another down. Illya did not look surprised to see him.

He was, however, angry.

There it was at last. The cherry on top of Napoleon’s personal Hell sundae. It made Illya’s fingers tick against his thighs and crimson blossom in his cheeks.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed.

Napoleon ignored the venomous tone. “I’m here to get to bottom of this.”

Looking deep into Illya’s eyes, Napoleon let the disappointment wash over him. His chest deflated and his brows drew together.

It wasn’t anger. It was just play acting a predictable role.

Illya was still terrified.

Terrified and defeated.

At least that was one emotion both men shared.

Napoleon was so lost in his own despair, a drowning man ignored by the coast guard, that he missed when Illya spun on his heel and shuffled down the stairs.


	3. Chapter 3

'I can see the sun, it's setting  
It's getting colder, starting to freeze.  
What makes a man want to break a heart with ease?  
I think I know,  
I think I might know.'

"What Makes A Man" ~ City and Colour 

Napoleon wondered what had woken him when the fritzing clock only read 2:43 am. He lay on his back, hands folded at his waist under the covers, and continued to breathe evenly.

Only his eyes were cracked a slit. Just enough to see the French balcony doors open a sliver, letting in cool autumn air.

That sliver was enough for a black silhouette to slither into the room. Napoleon prepared himself to spring up and thwart the intruder.

Then the curtains fluttered and moonlight landed on the rogue’s hair.

Napoleon’s heart missed two beats. One…Two… Just like a child’s game of hopscotch. And that’s what they were, wasn’t it? Children playing a repeating game?

Illya had clothed himself all in black except for his bronze head of hair. Nothing could disguise that.

In his right hand he held a pistol and silencer.

He approached Solo’s head, blocking the moonlight. Blocking _all _light.

His arm raised.

_Do something_, Solo berated himself.

This was Peril, the partner he’d grown to lovingly pester and who’d rescued him more times than he could count anymore.

Illya was his _friend_. He was at his mercy no matter what happened.

The gun muzzle was so close to Napoleon’s temple that he could reach out and lick it with his tongue if he wanted.

He didn’t want to. He wanted to rip Faivre in half with his bare and bloody hands:

For just then a diamond fell to the carpet at Illya’s feet. When Napoleon’s alarmed and distraught brain processed this, that Illya was crying, Napoleon went boneless.

Illya wiped his nose with a gloved hand.

Then he was gone. Vanished.

Napoleon would never, no matter how many years went by, be able to explain how the Russian was standing there one second and gone the next.

Napoleon didn’t sleep again that night. He lay there, whiter than porcelain, and trembled for hours.

* * *

Illya was long gone by the time Napoleon rose and stumbled downstairs for breakfast. The bar was empty at the early morning hour, the fire being re-stoked by a young boy. The agent panicked about the absence of his partner, shoveling rubbery eggs into his mouth, until Kush dropped a newspaper in his lap. The inn owner rushed away after he did so, like reading the morning news was an illegal thing.

Napoleon flipped through the pages until he came to Obituaries. His hands still shook from last night so it took him a few seconds to read the words.

And there it was. The reason for Illya’s insistent phone calls and grieving leave from work.

Forking one last mouthful of toast and eggs into his mouth, Napoleon dashed out the inn doors and onto the sidewalk. It had snowed the night before, leaving Russia’s skyline looking like a dusty portrait. Children danced through the powder, weaving through their parents’ legs and giggling like thieves.

_I am a thief_, thought Napoleon. _Does that make me a child too?_

This proved an irritating thought if for no other reason than that he was a man not given to fancy, no matter his layered on, charming persona. He was cut and dry. Get ‘er done. No getting sloppy or maudlin.

Yet here he was in communist Russia, chasing after a partner he was supposed to have killed, who he’d bonded with on a level he couldn’t even begin to fathom.

No friend in Napoleon’s life, growing up or related, had ever known the facets of his personality, his mind, as well as Illya. His weaknesses, the vulnerable scenes from his past that still haunted him, the strange way he had of showing affection.

Solo had never let anyone _close enough_ to know such things.

It made this recent breakdown of trust agonizing. Like Napoleon’s organs were being siphoned from his body one by one.

So strangled by these thoughts, Napoleon realized he was walking in the wrong direction.

“Fool,” he muttered to himself. He waved his arm for a taxi.

“Where are you headed, comrade?” asked the driver in Russian once Napoleon hopped in the backseat.

Napoleon let out a whooshing breath. “Saint Marguerite Church.”

“Ah,” said the driver, pulling into traffic. “The funeral times are today.”

“Times?” asked Napoleon, eyes wide. “There’s more than one? There was only one name in the paper.”

The driver shrugged. “The young chap lost more than one family member. The others were a disgrace to their country—dissenters, I heard. So they only made one public. But…er…you didn’t hear that from me.”

He blushed hard, though a fearful flick of his eyes over Napoleon’s finer suit explained it.

“I am not government,” said Solo. He switched to English in evidence, using a deliberately American turn of phrase. “Mum’s the word, pal.”

The driver let out his own exhale. He nodded his gratitude, as if Napoleon were humouring him. He hummed along to the radio while they drove.

In all, it took over an hour to leave the thick of city bustle behind and reach the forested graveyard. Willow tree fronds brushed along headstones and swaying maples framed the stone church’s double doors. It was small by cathedral standards though its signature arching, tapered roof felt strangely at home, architecture disseminated around the world.

One glance told Napoleon he had clearly missed the ceremonies. He paid the driver and padded across the grass.

The minister was chatting with a measly crowd of neighbours and friends. Workmen in navy jumpsuits waited at a distance to bury the bodies. They didn’t smoke, which surprised Solo, but their eyes were solemn while they propped their arms on their shovels and hoes.

Muted sunlight shone off the casket…

And a golden head of hair before it.

Napoleon hung back, leaning against a tree.

Illya wore his best black button up and gray slacks. He shivered in the cold but didn’t put on the black wool coat under his arm. His eyes were downcast, brows pinched. In a world of his own.

With a mournful gaze, he hardly blinked while staring at the simple white stone. Three names were engraved upon it. He inhaled a tired breath, like it was physical work to get oxygen.

Then, Kuryakin shook the minister’s hand, hopped the church steps, and disappeared inside. Napoleon processed this new development and kept his face neutral, despite being thrown for a loop.

_What could he need inside?_

Napoleon gave his friend ten minutes before following. Nobody paid him any heed, reduced to a trickle of black clad mourners departing in their cars. It made Solo’s heart pang for Kuryakin, that he obviously didn’t have many roots.

Or…any at all, really.

Solo soundlessly closed the church door. He stood in the shadows of a giant bell overhead, watching Illya meet with Oleg at the front, near the pulpit.

The man handed Kuryakin two sets of dog tags and a wallet of tattered photographs.

“This is everything,” said Oleg. “You’ll never see me again after today.”

Illya nodded. He tucked the items in his trousers pocket. His head hung and he seemed placid until his hand suddenly shot out, encircling the man’s bicep. The man tried to shake him off but Kuryakin was stronger. It wasn’t an angry hold but a desperate one, a child’s fist in his father’s coat.

“They died well?”

At first Napoleon wondered if the scratchy, raw voice belonged to one of the statues. He’d never, ever heard his partner sound like this.

A hard stare overcame Oleg’s face. Napoleon’s throat tightened. He tensed.

“It’s the Gulag,” Oleg barked in reply. “No one dies well.”

Then he was gone in a swirl of black fur coat. The last of the cars drove away, leaving everything silent but for the breeze through nicks in the ancient stone.

They were alone. Just Kuryakin and Solo.

No…just _Illya_ and _Napoleon_.

That sounded better, right.

For no less than eight minutes both men were motionless. The statues had more life than Illya’s lost stare and Napoleon’s waxy skin, than the hush of immutable men that few rarely saw.

“How dare you come here.” Illya didn’t turn around but the sound of his harsh tone made Napoleon flinch. Of course his friend had known he was there all along. “How _dare_ you come to this place.”

Napoleon knew it would probably get him a punch but he couldn’t help it. He stumbled down the row of pews, so devoid of his usual grace, and stopped within arm’s reach of the Russian.

“I’m sorry about your mother.”

Slowly, hands shaking, he squeezed Illya’s shoulder. He _needed_ to at least try and ease some of whatever torture dug into Kuryakin’s skin. 

Illya spun around and shoved Napoleon’s chest with both hands. It was flat palmed, a thunder clap.

Solo knew it was coming but he still fell back into a wooden pew. And again, Illya didn’t look angry—maybe a little—but hurt and betrayal remained king over his features.

_He’s afraid of me. Illya Kuryakin is _afraid of me.

It made Napoleon’s eyes instantly well up. He’d been hit by Kuryakin before in earnest and this was gentle by comparison. He was holding back. He was holding back because _he doesn’t want to hurt me_.

“Did you come here to _finally_ finish the job?” Illya spat. He puffed himself like a downed alley cat knowing it was going to lose. “To witness your handiwork?”

“Handiwork?” Napoleon threw his hands up. “What is going on? Talk to me, Illya!”

His last words were a shout and Kuryakin closed his eyes, a shield against them. He went to the communion table at the front of the church. Napoleon followed him.

With the table between them, in such a holy space, Napoleon felt his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth.

Illya hesitated. Then he fished in a hidden pocket of his jacket. Napoleon stiffened himself for a pistol shot or some damning secret.

Instead, Illya’s shaking hand came out with a squat glass jar, complete with grey twist cap. The whole thing was no bigger than Illya’s hand.

It still made Napoleon gasp. For inside clinked a brass bullet, a _huge_ bullet.

A sniper’s bullet.

Illya thumped it down on the table, echoing. “My cousin.”

He removed another jar. “My father.”

When Kuryakin reached inside his coat _again_, bile surged up Napoleon’s esophagus.

Illya slammed the last one down. “Moya matushka.”

The bullets had been cleaned, shiny now. Shiny enough to see a five pointed star etched out, carved meticulously, in the bout of each massive round.

Napoleon’s head whipped up. “No. _No_—”

“One by one,” said Illya, voice low, “my family was picked off. Until last week my mother was shot while buying bread at the market!”

Illya was at last yelling but his eyes had long since crumpled.

“You’ve been playing games with me. That sniper in the Macy’s window. Reaching for my tie to strangle me—taunting me with the knowledge you could do it whenever you want.”

He uncurled his fingers so they hung loose. Like an invisible flat iron had smoothed the fabric of his face, Kuryakin calmed.

“Faivre told me everything. That you’d kill me too, in the end,” said Illya quietly. “That it was all an act, you working with me. You needed to get close so you could tie up the KGB’s loose end—me—for them. You’ve shot us down one by one. Now is my turn, I suppose.”

Napoleon was irate but for an entirely different reason. Fever overcame his features, twisting them, red and shaking. “Illya, listen to me: I _did not_ kill your family. I’m sorry they died but I didn’t do it.”

“You are an expert marksman,” said Illya.

“Of course, but—”

“And you used to carve stars in your sniper rounds, before you joined UNCLE. A naively patriotic act.”

“Illya, just because that used to be my trademark—”

The Russian pounded his fist on the table. “You’ve been sent to kill me! So finish it!”

Napoleon was so wild that he darted around the table and gripped Illya’s lapels in both his fists. “We’ve been partners for _three years_, Peril. Do you really think I’d go double agent on you now? Do you really think I’d sell my soul to do such a thing?”

“You said you’d catch up with me back at headquarters.” Kuryakin’s voice sounded like he was lost in a dream. “I flew from Paris to New York by myself. You said you had some ‘overseas’ business. All the facts fit. It was the exact timing of mama’s murder.”

Solo shook his friend again, tears threading between his gritted teeth. “My absence was to visit an old art dealer friend. _Not_ to shoot your mother like a fiend. Would I really obey Sanders over my duty to you?”

Illya’s lips wobbled, just for a split second, and Napoleon felt his heart shatter into a million irreplaceable pieces.

It was the most tragic sight so far. They’d seen each other in a lot of vulnerable places and positions, but never had his face trembled like that in front of Solo.

The Russian’s defeated voice was reduced to a whisper. “I don’t know about anything anymore.”

Illya looked like a man trapped in a nightmare, one where he was a helpless observer to his own destruction.

It was contagious. Napoleon just wanted to shake him and shake him and _shake_—

He woke from the fervor to see he was doing just that. Illya wasn’t fighting him, though he had both hands wrapped loosely around Napoleon’s wrists.

Solo constricted the black fabric with such force that his hands shook. He felt skin also balled up under his grip but Illya didn’t wince. He just gripped the wrists, as if he were handcuffed and at the mercy of an executioner.

“I couldn’t do it,” he choked out. “It was textbook protocol, shooting you last night, but I could never harm you.”

Napoleon briefly rested the crown of his head on Kuryakin’s chest. “Nor I you, dear Peril. Never. Not for all the money or power in the world.”

The chest under Napoleon’s forehead hummed. “When did we get so soft?”

Solo’s body became statue-stiff, from his head to his toes. He backed up to gape at Illya “That’s it.”

“What’s it?” Kuryakin frowned, still minutely quivering from the false threat of being murdered by a friend. “What are we missing? If you did not kill the last of the Kuryakins then who did?”

“But those were not the last of the Kuryakins,” Napoleon insisted. “Were they?”

In such close proximity, he saw the moment Illya understood. “No…I am.”

“They purposely threw a wedge of distrust between us,” said Solo, thinking out loud. He took his hands back to gesture. “They wanted us to kill each other, Illya. They wanted it to look like two government agents from two countries with tense relations, no matter how long we worked together, would still go feral and turn on each other.”

Illya nodded, brows beetling again. “Our deaths would be a political statement. I would kill you out of mistrust and you would kill me in self defence.”

It was Napoleon’s voice that lowered to a whisper this time. “We’ve both been played, bratishka.”

Kuryakin jumped at the nickname and Napoleon, without even thinking about it, smoothed the wrinkles he’d made in the shirt.

“We really did go soft,” said Illya in open wonder.

“I think it came as an equally great shock to our handlers.” Napoleon ground his teeth. The thought of Russian authorities killing Illya’s remaining family just to get them at each other’s throats sent a red wave crashing over his vision. “They rather panicked.”

“And it didn’t work.” Relief was palpable in Kuryakin’s voice. “We’re loyal to each other, and that’s what matters.”

They were words Kuryakin never would have allowed himself to say three years ago and they both knew it. A testament to their trust in each other, a more poetic man might say.

How far they’d come.

Napoleon was just patting himself on the back for a job well done, wrapped up in a neat little bow in a church of all places, when he heard the ticking.

Illya’s pocket was ticking.

_Tick tick tick tickTICKTICKTICK_

The two men locked eyes.

“The wallet,” they breathed in unison.

Kuryakin tore it out of his pocket. A red light blinked along the leather wallet’s spine. He ran up the pews, arm slung back for an epic throw.

_It’s too late_, Napoleon wanted to argue. _You’re not going to make it._

A scream shredded from his mouth instead—“_Illya_!”

He followed hot on his friend’s heels, pulse a frenzy at the bomb in his friend’s milky fingers. The red dot was a dead Russian giveaway but the sleek, compact design wasn’t fooling anybody. American made.

“Get away!” Illya shoved Napoleon again, this time in a rough, protective gesture. “What are you doing?! Get _back_!”

He threw it out the church doors but the wallet didn’t even make it to the threshold before it decimated.

Napoleon’s world whited out.


	4. Chapter 4

'Well I can hear my train comin'  
I'm still runnin' for my life  
What makes a man pray, when he's about to die?  
I think I know,  
I think I might know.'

"What Makes A Man" ~ City and Colour 

A marionette, someone had snipped the strings of his life and taken him up into the rafters of the universe.

Nothing.

Absolute nothing.

And really…there was no such _thing_ as nothing. Just a Something so big it looked like a void.

_A void. _

_Am I the void?_

It was awfully lonely here.

That Something cradled Napoleon’s mind and filled his nostrils with stardust. He coughed on them, feeling his arteries light up with the original elements of the universe. They swirled into his chest like summer rain in reverse. He filled up like a cloud. His temples thundered.

The universe pulsed. He coughed it out.

_There_ was the rain, a salty rivulet across his nose.

Napoleon opened his eyes only to realize they were already open.

Still nothing.

_Blindness?_

A shuddering in his limbs signaled that he’d been coughing on dust for quite some time but he couldn’t hear it. Not even a breath.

Napoleon extracted his arm from underneath himself, where he lay sprawled on his left side. At least…he _thought_ he was lying down. He could have been floating in space and it wouldn’t have felt much different.

He waved his hand in front of his face.

Nothing.

He snapped a finger near his ear. Silence. The explosion had burst an ear drum, if the stickiness along his jaw was any indication.

Warmth spread along his back. Napoleon worried that his shirt was so tight all of a sudden.

_Did I rupture something? Is it swelling?_

Fishing around, Napoleon found a hand buried in the front of his coat. It had mortised into a claw shape, a spider’s death curl.

Napoleon jolted as if zapped.

_Illya!_

For it was the Russian at his back, he felt now, slightly bent over Napoleon in a protective shell. It was he whose clutch pulled at the shirt.

Napoleon slapped at the hand.

Nothing. _Nothing._

_Is Illya the void too?_

He struggled against the hold but Illya was unresponsive. Napoleon was trapped. He kicked and pain lanced up his leg. His head suffered the same fate, pressed against something cold and solid. It forced Napoleon to panic in this awful position, nearly fetal.

Napoleon had no idea he was sobbing until he heard it. His other ear, the one pressed to the stone floor, slowly faded back to life. The other was still silent.

His eyes scrunched together then opened again. The rain inside his cloud body poured thick and fast, fat tears that soaked his caked skin. He stuttered on shallow breaths. Nausea drowned him suddenly and he had to put a hand over his mouth.

His harsh pants echoed in a strange, dissonant chorus.

Napoleon kept one hand on Illya’s at his ribs and the other flailed about in this other worldly black. Ink was bright compared to this.

‘_Wa-BONG!_’

Napoleon paused in surprise. He struck his prison walls again.

‘_Wa-BOOooonnngg…_’

Going slump in shock, Napoleon realized where they were.

“You shoved us under the bell, Peril.” Napoleon felt the slope of the giant church bell above their heads. The clapper had broken off in its fall, three pieces next to Napoleon. His voice was a slur, so weak he couldn’t hear it. “Trust you to find a bomb shelter in a church.”

Napoleon turned his face to the stone, shuddering.

He had just enough strength left to roll himself over, onto his right side. Illya’s hand fell off him. Napoleon’s heart seized. He scrambled to place his own hands on Illya, one in the shoulder of his shirt and the other on the chest. Bunching his fingers in them, he tugged the Russian closer.

Patting around, Napoleon felt a lump the size of the heel of his hand on Illya’s head.

_He saved me from that. _

His friend’s eyes were also closed. Hair tousled in all the wrong directions, a sticky field of torn flesh sprouted from Illya’s spine. Their limbs were tangled together at crooked angles.

Napoleon leaned forward.

He pandered himself here, in this secluded hellhole where no one would ever find them, the final resting place of Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo.

Napoleon lowered his forehead to rest on Illya’s.

It was selfish. He never would have dared if the Russian were awake.

He breathed the universe into Illya’s nostrils.

_Illya’s not a void_, Napoleon asserted to himself, to Something. _He’s stardust and light and…_

Napoleon hazed in and out, tuned to the unsteady, sometimes halting thump of Illya’s veins against his skin.

Time meant nothing. It never had. He lay there, feeling no hunger or pain, feeling only the fabric of Illya’s shirt in his bloody hands and the tumbling of the universe in his lungs.

“Look ‘t us,” Napoleon whispered. “No blaze ‘f gl’ry. No fam’ly to our names…just two…kids…dying under a bell…”

Napoleon’s tears shut off. He sniffed. Stopped shaking. Went so still he felt sure they’d climbed out of the rafters and onto the roof of the world.

Up…Up…

“Should’ve just shot…me…Per’l.” Napoleon would’ve laughed if he wasn’t starting to weaken further. Dizziness assailed him.

_I’m going supernova. A dying star._

He breathed into Illya’s nostrils one last time and remembered his friend's words: _“We’re loyal to each other and that’s what matters.” _

“Dear Illya.”

Napoleon winked out.

* * *

The workman frowned at this insistent American. “It’s been three days. They’re not here.”

Waverly swore. Then swore again. He took off his glasses and smashed them against a nearby bulldozer.

“That’s not good enough!”

Never had Russia witnessed such an excavation. A crew of two hundred combed through the church rubble.

Nor such an explosion.

It had been tracked and recorded on seismographs three hundred miles away.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the workman, meaning it with the way Waverly’s bright eyes didn’t match his furious glower. “They’re dead and you know it.”

* * *

“He won’t let go!”

“Oxygen! I need oxygen here!”

* * *

“Well?”

A shuffle of high heeled shoes. “They are dispatched, sir.”

“Both of them?”

“Yes. Dead as a doornail.”

A gasping noise came from a man’s mouth. “I didn’t think this day would…_could _come.”

A grief filled sigh. “None of us saw it coming.”

“God have mercy on their souls.”


	5. Chapter 5

'I can see the sun settin'  
It's casting shadows on the sea.'

"What Makes A Man" ~ City and Colour 

He felt a ghosted breath in his lungs. Air that didn’t belong to him.

But he knew this air, that taste, the savoury essence sticking to his alveoli.

He knew it better than his serial number. Better than the sound of his handler’s smoking puffs. Even, just perhaps, better than the sound of his mother’s heartbeat.

Now that’s funny…when had that happened?

Then the panicked ghost air was replaced with something warm that smelled of chemicals.

Someone was shrieking.

_It’s not me, is it?_

It couldn’t be, not with the snake stuck down his throat, replacing the taste of _home_ and _safe_ with _alone_ and not—

“—Going to make it! He’s not going to make it!”

“Don’t call it just yet. Come on, Ruski! _Breathe_!”

The shrieks sounded the way the home air tasted. But it was wrong. Something was wrong.

“And someone sedate him—now. He’ll wake the whole dang infirmary.”

“Sir?”

“_What_?”

“…We lost him.”

* * *

Light pin pricked into the void.

_Strong_ light. Stronger than sunlight. What was stronger than star light?

“Sir? Can you hear me?”

It was a penlight.

He felt himself being lifted onto something hard. Not as hard as stone, though. Not as hard as diamonds. Were diamonds made of space minerals too?

“Mr. Solo?”

Through the crack in the universe, Napoleon watched more suns go by overhead in a dizzying yet precise dance. A tribe of faces, some wearing white masks over their noses and mouths, peered down at him. By their panting, they seemed to be running.

“Femur—”

“Triple fracture—”

“I’ve got bone protrusions here!”

“—Spinal fluid not—”

The murmuring of these stars silenced abruptly as a grizzled man’s face thundered into view.

“Why are they both on the same gurney?”

More silence.

“Sir,” said one woman. “We can’t separate them. His hands…we nearly broke his thumb trying to pry them off…”

“I can’t operate on them if—”

“He’s_ not breathing_!” shrilled a young man, an intern.

The tribe gained more faces. Nearly a dozen people flurried around Napoleon. He felt, like an earthquake finally stopping, that something had silenced.

_Illya. His heart’s not…_

Suddenly air met his palms. Honest to God _air_.

Napoleon might have been three days without food or water and nearly bled out and a little oxygen deprived—

But he opened his mouth and screamed like his life depended on it.

Someone’s life sure did.

_Illya isn’t under my hands. They took him. Where is he?!_

Napoleon closed his eyes, lips bloodless, and his hoarse shrieks positively filled the room. The din of panicked medical personnel amped up.

A needle pricked into his arm. He quieted.

“…We lost him.”

“Don’t just stand there—get me a defibrillator!”

The stars were crashing into each other…drifting away. The void licked at Napoleon and snatched away his starlight.

“Anaesthetize them both. Now. Waverly gave the order.”

_Where is my Peril?_

He must have made some sort of noise for then the young man’s swimming profile came back into Napoleon’s line of sight. He smiled a grim smile, eyes red and wet, and guided Napoleon’s hand to a rust colour sleeve.

Illya under his hand at last. But Illya was a dead star, giving off no light.

“It’ll be okay, when you wake up,” the intern assured.

It wasn’t.

* * *

Illya came awake all at once. Not in a fade. Not by incremental degrees, checker marked by sleep.

His eyes just…popped open.

It was dark. He was alone in a small hospital room, hooked to more machines by his bed than he cared to count. He’d been propped on his left side.

Someone had opened the door. It let in hallway light enough to see in the night time gloom. It wasn’t a nurse, as he expected.

Instead it was a man with grey hair and a favourite uncle’s smile and fire in his eyes.

“They’re not doing that to you again,” said Waverly into the dark. Softly, like it was a secret. “Oleg is dead. Perhaps it wasn’t ethical, but it was self defence anyhow.”

Waverly snapped his coat jacket straight. “Keep dreaming good things, Sleeping Beauty. Don’t die on us again and we’ll call it even.”

Then the director was gone, leaving Illya to stare at the seagulls outside his window and wonder that he felt no pain.

One of the machines beside his bed hissed and a cool rush zipped through Illya’s system.

He was gone before the first tear hit the pillow.

* * *

Napoleon woke exactly two minutes after they took the tube out of his throat. A medical miracle, certainly, considering his surgery had actually taken _longer_ than Kuryakin’s.

He lurched off the gurney, gripping the aging doctor’s wrist with a look of stone cold resolve.

It was an awe inspiring sight, even with the blood dribbling from the corner of Napoleon’s mouth. Not to mention the skin grafts on his neck.

His voice came out rock steady: “If you hurt Illya, I will kill you.”

The doctor exchanged a glance with Waverly.

Then the doctor nodded. “Duly noted.”

* * *

“We lost him.”

“What?”

“We can’t find him.”

“Oh come on. Not funny.”

“I’m not kidding! His bed is empty!”

* * *

This time sleep was clingy. It pulled him down into those comforting, drowning depths. Why had consciousness been a lifeguard hoisting him up anyway? It was still dark outside the tiny hospital window.

The mattress dipped on the left hand side. Someone struggled to climb even that frail height, wheelchair forgotten.

Illya kept his eyes closed until he felt a cold nose press to his shoulder.

“Cowboy.”

“Peril.”

Illya buried a hand in Napoleon’s fleecy bathrobe and pulled him the rest of the way up as best he could. Solo traced the bandages Illya could see on his chest, face, hands, and sides but not feel. Illya pulled the covers up over them both.

“How long,” he asked, “Since…?”

“A week. You’ve been unconscious a week.”

“And you?”

“…I woke up after a day or two. Hellish in here without you.”

Then Napoleon literally deflated against Illya. His whole body let out its tension and he breathed out a strange sound: Not a whimper, not a sigh, not a sob…

It was a swan song.

Illya inhaled the airy notes and _there it was_. Home. Safe. _His_.

“You’re fine,” Napoleon choked out in relief. “You’re really fine! They weren’t sure about brain dam…about your mental state since you flat lined at least twice. And that was _before_ your surgery.”

“I’m sorry.”

A beat.

“What ever for?”

“Worrying you.”

“Apology accepted.”

They lay completely still in the dark. Illya felt no pain; he worried only over the giant white cast along Napoleon’s entire left leg and a matching mosaic of bandages and splints around some of his fingers.

“You saved my life,” said Napoleon. “That bell…”

“We saved each other. You wouldn’t have been in danger if it weren’t for me.”

He felt Napoleon’s lips tremble once against his the skin over his heart. “I would never betray you, Peril.”

“I’m sorry that I thought you would.” Pesky tears gathered in Illya’s eyes. He blinked them away. “I was blinded by grief. If I’d just seen what was happening sooner—”

“Don’t.” Napoleon looked weaker than a newborn lamb but his voice could take down a bull. “Sanders and Oleg played us both. The only time they ever properly worked together, I imagine.”

Illya sucked in a sharp breath. “Both of them. So it’s true.”

“Waverly explained it while I was on morphine so my details are sketchy. They found documents, conversations between the two of them while cooking up this plot to dispose of us. Alas, they’re dead. Can’t say I’ll send flowers.”

“How?”

“Something about them resisting arrest at the Russian border. A female police officer shot them both in self defence.”

Illya’s brows disappeared into his filthy hair. “A _female _officer? I’ve never seen one of those in Russia.”

Napoleon sniffed. “Yes, well…”

“I’ll have to thank Gabby one day.”

Both men smiled into the dark. Illya didn’t care that it hurt the burns on his face—it must have Napoleon’s too—he just lay there and reveled in the freedom. No more handlers. No more slaps in shady alleyways and threats to his family. No more wondering if Oleg would shoot him.

Illya’s insides melted like butter in a pan.

Something struck him suddenly. “Our bond scared them.”

The dark head of hair on Illya’s chest ‘hmmed.’ His eyes fluttered shut, breathing even at last.

“Our bond _scared_ them.”

“Yes, dear Peril. You’ve established that. Doctors must have you on the good stuff.”

“It frightened them—Just like it did to me, at first.”

This caught Solo’s attention. He stilled and shuffled so he too remained lying on his side. However, he backed up to face Illya. His eyes were wide and open and Illya could count, not even on one hand, the number of times Napoleon had looked at him like that. He appeared decades younger.

“Then they had a taste of their own medicine,” Napoleon whispered.

Illya forced himself not to look away, to catalogue the latent terror in Napoleon’s eyes. How cowed he must have been by Sanders, deep down inside himself. Not feeling human, an invisible captive to the worst kind of master.

“Freed slaves,” Illya slurred. “That’s what we are.”

Napoleon hummed a laugh and Illya fizzed again.

“You’re getting to be quite the philosopher, Peril.”

“Not sc’red of you anymore. Of…this.”

A bandaged hand reached down and squeezed Illya’s. Then it was gone, replaced by Napoleon’s head against his. Hairs tickled his forehead.

This time Napoleon did sigh. “Nor am I.”

Illya’s hand fisted in Napoleon’s robe again, just over his heart. It shook a little. The fear of the bomb, of Napoleon dying, crashed over him in a foamy crest. Napoleon fell asleep patting the hand.

Breaths mingled.

That was how the nursing interns found them an hour later.

“Should we?”

The young male intern straightened. “Not a chance. We never saw them.”

“Right.”

* * *

Doctors got used to the sentinel, a perpetual shadow over their shoulders.

When Kuryakin was bathed. When they tested reaction time. That time Kuryakin had a nightmare and Solo literally fended them off with an IV stand.

To Napoleon escaping his room.

To the sight of the two men shaking, side by side, in Kuryakin’s bed.

Physical therapists came to dread working with Solo because it meant he had to be separated from his friend. Which meant lots of sassing and classy insults.

“Have you ever seen such a strange partnership?” asked the intern to the head doctor one day.

The old man paused in his notes. He took off his glasses and shook his head. None of the students had seen the grumpy old man so wry or at a loss.

“Never,” said the veteran doctor. “Not in all my life.”

* * *

There was silence for a long beat after the medical report was read. All eyes watched Illya closely. Waiting for the blow up, the anger.

The Russian however, only mushed his lips in the closest thing he could do to a shrug while in traction, on his side. “Huh. That’s my longest list yet.”

The folder almost slipped out of Waverly’s hands. He recovered with a cough.

Napoleon didn’t even try to hide his bulging eyes and slack jaw. “You may never walk again and that’s all you have to say? Peril—the damage to your back drained _sixty percent of your spinal fluid_.”

“And yet I am still alive,” said Illya in a mocking exaggeration of his Russian accent. “And so are you. I achieved both of my goals when I shoved us under the falling bell. What more can I ask for? Director, you said it yourself that the bomb was more to bring the church down on us than to blast us immediately.”

“Hmm. I suppose, Mr. Kuryakin, but that really doesn’t—”

“The doctor told me the cerebrospinal fluid is almost regenerated on its own. So there.” Illya shifted deeper into his hospital bed, an unreadable set to his mouth. “All ends well.”

Napoleon threw pleading eyes at Waverly.

Waverly blotted at his forehead with a rose patterned handkerchief. “Illya.”

This unheard of use of his first name snapped both agents’ eyes to him.

“You’ve been in here twelve days, Illya, awake for five of those. Can you feel your legs?”

The blunt question made Napoleon jump but Illya just blinked. “No,” he said. “I cannot. I wish I could say the same for my chest.”

“And you.” Waverly rounded on Napoleon, making him straighten in his sweatpants and polo shirt. “You had bone shards protruding from your hands and _three_ from your femur. Both of you have cracked ribs that punctured lungs. Do you really think you should go home yet?”

“Wait a minute,” said Napoleon, rallying. “I thought we were here to gang up on Illya. Not me.”

Illya grinned. “Is two for price of one today.”

Napoleon wanted to flip his partner a very rude gesture but settled for a glare with Waverly present. Waverly’s eyes widened behind his glasses and he took a step back.

Napoleon glanced around, wondering what had spooked the director. Solo gasped. He’d unconsciously placed himself in between Waverly and Illya’s bed.

“Sorry.” Solo rubbed a hand across his aching forehead. He sagged on his crutches. “Sorry. Must be the meds. I’m still kind of…”

“Defensive?” Waverly smiled that kind one he kept in reserve for moments such as this and traumatized agents. “I’m sorry they did this right under our noses, boys. You should never have had to deal with that.”

A fierce ember suddenly flared in Waverly’s eyes. He bared his teeth. “And you never will again. Not ever again on my watch. You hear me?”

Stunned speechless, Illya and Napoleon nodded.

Waverly quieted, a placated mother bear. “You’re your own men now. Whether you still wish to work for UNCLE is your choice. I will not take your agency away from you as those cockroaches did.”

“We have a choice?” Illya mirrored his partner’s shock from minutes earlier. “You’re not going to force us?”

Napoleon’s throat tightened at the exact moment Waverly’s fists did.

_This Russian and breaking my heart…_

Waverly stepped up to Napoleon, eyes up but face lowered. Napoleon floundered. What was he…?

“Oh. Oh, of course.” Napoleon stepped aside, answering the unspoken request for permission. “Go ahead.”

Waverly nodded his thanks and with that exchange, Solo realized the two agents had been given custody of each other, that Waverly would never force something on them as long as they lived.

The director said as much when he lowered himself into the bedside chair, facing Illya, and took the Russian’s hand. The less bandaged one. The one that hadn’t nearly been blown off.

In any other case, on any other day, Kuryakin would have bristled at the action. Would have snatched his hand back or shoved the older man away.

Today…today he just gazed steadily back at the director and let the man do whatever he wanted with his hand.

“No,” said Waverly, like that one word could erase years of conditioning and abuse. “I give you my word. You can walk, er…wheel out of this hospital and become a goat farmer and I wouldn’t stop you. You can choose never to see the inside of a federal building again.”

“But…”

“_No_.” Waverly pumped the hand in his. His breaths crackled, wet. “Your life, dear Illya, is entirely up to you.”

Illya didn’t move for a long time. There was no sudden eruption of tears. No heartfelt words. 

Instead, his eyes slid to Napoleon and he searched them, for what Napoleon didn’t know. Blue on brown. Two countries united under a friendship nobody expected. Napoleon held the stare.

_A question_, he saw now. _Illya is asking me a question._

Napoleon deciphered it in an instant. Breath escaped him in a strangled sound. “Always, Illya. I’ll always pick up when you call. You’re not getting rid of me until you’re old and grey.”

“Even if our lives diverge?”

Solo’s nose wrinkled in a vicious battle to keep composed. That this man he’d once hated knew him better than a lie detector, better than anyone Napoleon had ever known, still moved him.

“Especially then,” he whispered.

Neither man had any idea when their hands had tangled around each other but Napoleon clasped it all the same.

“If we live that long.” Kuryakin snorted, masking bright eyes. “Can you picture it? Me, running after goats in a wheelchair. You can really live up to your name, then, Cowboy.”

Waverly rolled his eyes but the smile never left his face.

In the chaos of them all laughing, perhaps a tad manically, Napoleon found his hand on Illya’s cheek, just for a split second. Illya’s nostrils flared.

“I know,” Napoleon soothed. “Me too.”

Waverly was pretty good at speaking nonverbal Illya Kuryakin too, apparently. “Perhaps, gentlemen, you could have both?”

Illya scowled. “I am not riding a desk.”

“Good heavens, no. Even if I _would_ pay you just to sit in our lobby and glare at rookie agents. Now there’s a nice thought.” Waverly stood. “No, I was thinking something a little more…flexible.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how much medical research I did on top of already extensive first aid training. Whew.

'Well I can hear my train comin'  
Looks like time is not on my side  
Well I can hear my train comin...'

"What Makes A Man" ~ City and Colour 

_Ten months later…_

To their credit, it wasn’t exactly goats.

“Did you give Rumpel her de-wormer yet?”

Napoleon rolled his eyes, folding up his sleeves. “Just give me a minute, Grandma.”

Illya rocked back and forth in his wheelchair. He patted the fuzzy nose that bent down to sniff at peppermints in his sweater pocket.

“No, malysh,” he said. “You can have them when you are all clean inside.”

He pretended not to see Napoleon hide a fond smirk. Rumpel’s ears went back and she let out a whinny.

“This beast is spoiled,” said Napoleon. “No thanks to you.”

“You’re the one who insisted on buying a horse.”

The arrangement worked for both parties. Since neither man was a country boy, despite Solo’s nickname, they lived in Manhattan and commuted to a boarding stable in upstate New York. Napoleon did barn chores to supplement his army pension, along with Illya’s translation work.

They needed this more than they realized. Ten months to just…be. To just wake up at the same time, in the same apartment, and not worry over guns or explosions.

Napoleon taught Illya to cook. Illya took long strolls in Central Park and didn’t look around for snipers.

They didn’t panic at the sight of wallets or churches anymore. Fewer nightmares.

Progress.

“Gabby picked it out. Blame her.”

Napoleon lowered his sunglasses to send his friend a long look. “And make her cranky after her date with you last night? I’m not suicidal.”

Illya’s ears burned.

“Hey.” Napoleon put up his glove covered hands, oral syringe and all. “I’m just glad you’re not shoving her away anymore. Our phone bill can’t handle it.”

Kuryakin didn’t even attempt to censor a huge grin. “That’s because today is the _day_. The doctor gave me the green light.”

Napoleon sobered immediately. “We’re going slow. No pushing it.”

Illya huffed. “Yes, yes. I will tell you if anything hurts.”

“Right away,” Napoleon insisted.

“Yes.” Illya inhaled and exhaled deliberately. “Right away.”

Napoleon crouched to be at Illya’s eye level. He tucked his sunglasses in his pocket. “You promise?”

Guilt assailed Illya, seeing the fear and frayed edges hidden away inside Napoleon. The ones he only let Illya see when he was tired or overwhelmed.

Illya’s fingers brushed over Napoleon’s scarred fingers, the one Napoleon probably didn’t even realize he’d placed on Illya’s knee.

“I promise,” he replied softly. “Stop worrying.”

Napoleon stood, muttering. “With you, I don’t think that’s possible.”

The horse flapped her lips over Illya’s hair, then Napoleon’s.

“You dumb mare,” Solo growled. He injected the de-wormer into her mouth. The chestnut licked at her teeth. “You have to be the nosiest creature I’ve ever met.”

Illya smiled. “You’re not fooling anyone. You sneak her more treats than I do.”

“Don’t push it, Peril.”

It hadn’t even been a year, but Napoleon moved with his usual grace. Looking at him, Illya would never have known he nearly lost his left leg. The clean breaks meant they healed well.

Even their burn marks were fading every day. Now they were simply raised patches sinking back into their skin.

No…the nerves in Illya’s spine were the final hurdle.

“I still can’t believe I regained sensation in my legs _two months ago_ and you mother hens won’t let me use them.”

Napoleon ignored his friend with the ease of long practice. He focused on checking Rumpel’s Navajo blanket and saddle cinch. He gave the horn a tug, deeming it secure. Extra straps ran along the stirrup flaps, to keep Illya’s legs in place once he got up.

“Satisfied?” Kuryakin challenged.

Napoleon jutted out his chin and sniffed. “Not until we check the other side.”

Illya groaned. But he pushed himself along. He appreciated the off-road tires on his wheelchair now. The grassy pavilion in front of the barn didn’t hinder his movement at all. He ran a hand along the mare’s breastplate. His other hand snuck Rumpel a peppermint, the pink ones she loved so much.

“I saw that,” said Napoleon.

Illya suddenly stiffened. He moved his eyes but not his head. Hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

“Peril?”

_I know this feeling. Not again…_

“Illya?” Napoleon darted around the horse, brow wrinkled and fretting. “Are you with me, Illya? We’re at the barn in New York. You’re with me, remember? My name is Napol—”

Illya kept his body still. “Someone is here.”

Napoleon went rigid. He didn’t question the Russian’s instinct for a second. He pretended to check Rumpel’s halter.

“Wilson?” he called out for the barn owner. “You still here?”

Nothing.

Napoleon and Illya gazed at each other.

“I can’t go back to Russia, bratishka.” Illya forced himself to breathe calmly. “I can’t…I won’t.”

Napoleon knew, like Illya did, that it was a disadvantage, using up precious time—but he couldn’t resist squeezing Illya’s shoulder. He leaned down to breathe in the man’s ear.

“You’re not, Peril. That’s _my _promise. You good?”

Illya nodded, retrieving the pistol he always kept under his thigh in the chair. Solo pulled an automatic from his leather jacket pocket.

“Go,” said Illya, seeing his partner hesitate. “I’ve got this.”

Napoleon darted around the back of the barn, out of sight. Illya continued to run a hand along Rumpel’s shoulder while he unclipped the ‘seatbelt’ of his wheelchair with the other. The straps fell away from his hips.

Rumpel shifted in agitation.

_So she senses it too._

Her ears pricked towards the copse of trees at the property’s edge. It took some willpower, but Illya didn’t look.

“Ready, my Rumpel?”

The horse stood still, as Napoleon had trained her.

“Good, malysh,” said Illya. He closed his eyes, shaking under the fear that this…might not work. He’d lain awake wondering if the sensation below his waist was all an illusion. “Here we go.”

Illya reached up and set his palm in the stirrup. Rumpel turned her neck to look at him but didn’t move.

“Bogu, let this work.” Illya pushed.

Nothing happened.

“Come on…”

One foot hobbled off the footrest. He planted it in the grass. Then the other one. Sweat poured down Illya’s back but he forged on. He levered himself up far enough to hook his right elbow around the horn. Rumpel adjusted her stance.

“Good girl.”

Illya realized his mistake immediately. He was right handed.

“Don’t move!”

_Well that’s not Napoleon._

The accent was definitely English. Illya kept his body calm. He shifted slightly so that he was tilted. A short man in a newsboy cap and suspenders pointed a gun at Illya.

No sign of Napoleon.

“Seems rude to ambush a disabled man.”

The youth scoffed at Illya. “Please. I know who you are. You could take down a wrestler with one arm tied!”

Illya inclined his head. “You’re too kind.”

Subtly, he nudged the toe of his shoe into Rumpel’s front left hock. Nickering, she shifted.

_Bingo._

Illya pretended to balance himself and quickly switched arms. His left now looped around the saddle horn. He hefted the gun in his right hand, hidden between him and Rumpel’s barrel tummy.

“What do you want with me?” asked Illya, strangely hesitant to shoot. “Surely you don’t need such force.”

“You didn’t really think Faivre would just let you go, did you? Knowing what you know?”

“Faivre is rotting in a cell for his convicted crimes,” Kuryakin spat. His sense of strength mounted. “So he sends his errand boy?”

The man’s face contorted. “Don’t speak of him like that. It was _you_ and your blasted agency what put him away for life.”

Maybe it was the smell of fear in the air or Illya’s taut muscles or an irritating fly.

Whatever it was, Rumpel’s ears flattened and she kicked a hind leg.

The youth’s eyes widened, obviously not used to such large animals. Illya saw his chance.

_Now or never_.

He shoved off Rumpel’s flank and lunged at the youth. In his soaring fall, he decked the young man across the nose. Blood spurted them both.

The young man raised his gun. Illya sent it spinning away with a slap.

Illya pinned the man down by the neck in both of his hands. “I can’t believe you expected to ambush two trained field agents. You fool.”

“Let’s not be hasty on that victory lap, Peril.”

Illya glanced up at the sound of his partner’s voice. Napoleon walked from around the barn. both hands up in the air, no gun in sight, with two men and AK-47s at his back. Kuryakin scanned him for injuries or some hidden plan but Napoleon just seemed bored.

“This isn’t exactly how I pictured you getting your sea legs back,” said Solo. “But beggars can’t be choosers.”

Under the laissez-faire veneer he eyed Illya with concern, pale.

The youth under Kuryakin smirked, red face and all.

“I brought friends,” he wheezed.

“Why not kill us on sight?” Illya asked. “Sniper style?”

The youth’s face dropped, a bowling ball in the ocean, and something dark took its place.

“I wanted to have my fun first,” the youth whispered. “You deserve it for what you did to Father.”

Illya and Napoleon locked eyes, both gazes widening.

If this was a personal vendetta…

_Then there’s a very good chance he’s right. We’ll never make it out alive._

Like the young man’s words were a cue, one of the men behind Napoleon kicked at his femur with a steel toed boot. Solo cried out, face wadded. He fell to one knee, clutching his left.

Kuryakin struggled upwards, realizing what a vulnerable position he’d left himself in. _Needing_ to get to his friend.

“Ah, ah.” A gun muzzle nudged Illya’s scalp. The other man. “Are we going somewhere? I don’t think so.”

Kuryakin’s arms trembled from the effort of keeping the youth down and himself upright.

“Let go of him,” said the gunman.

Illya let out a frustrated sound.

In his peripheral vision, Napoleon twitched at the sound, panting hard.

“I said, get your hands off him.”

“…Nyet.”

The gunman hitched the rifle butt around and struck Illya across the forehead. Napoleon howled. He squirmed when a hand clawed the nape of his neck.

Illya rolled off Faivre, seeing stars, and the young man hopped to his feet. He massaged his throat, giving Illya a kick in the ribs for good measure.

The gunman laughed. “This one’s fun.”

The three honed in on Illya and he felt that the ‘jig was up,’ as Napoleon always said. Did they really think they could live under the radar indefinitely?

_Perhaps we are the fools._

“Hey. You’re a bastard child.”

All eyes swung to Napoleon. Kuryakin’s hand slipped from his bloody face in surprise.

Napoleon cocked his head. “I mean, I should have put it together sooner. The accent—_not_ French, you poor chap. The fact you’re much too young to be Helen Faivre’s child.”

“Ha!” The youth spat out blood onto the grass from Illya’s punch. “Helen is a milk faced worm! Faivre shouldn’t have left everything to that harpy.”

These words tipped the tide of the whole battle.

Nobody expected it, not even Napoleon.

There was no warning. No shaking hands. No tick against his leg or red face.

One minute Illya was on the ground and the next he surged to his knees, shooting one gunman in the head before he had time to blink.

“That was for Mama,” he growled.

“Your gun,” Solo breathed in amazement. “Those dimwits forgot about your gun.”

Napoleon slammed the gunman behind him, clipping on the bridge of his nose with his elbow. The man fell back. Out cold.

Kuryakin turned to shoot Faivre but the youth shoved him onto his back.

“_Napoleon_!” Illya didn’t mean for the charged screech to slip from between his teeth. He pushed against the youngest Faivre’s arms, where he’d caged Illya back against the ground. Faivre’s hand fought for his own pistol, lying at a distance in the grass. Illya wrenched it back.

_I’m so sorry, Cowboy._

Napoleon screamed for all he was worth, just like that hospital room, trying and failing to hobble to his feet. He resorted to crawling on all fours. Still not fast enough.

_CR-BANG!_

Faivre Jr. tumbled off Illya. His eyes were vacant, red waves pooling from a hole in his temple.

Illya lay there, chest heaving, for a long second.

“And that,” said a new voice, “Was for my boys.”

Shoes stopped beside his shoulder and a weathered hand appeared. Kuryakin followed it up to a chipper smile. How he’d missed that smile…

“I leave you two alone for a New York minute and just look at the mess you’ve made.”

All the air inside Illya left him in a rush and he grasped the hand. It squeezed back once before pulling.

Waverly’s strong arm hoisted the Russian to his feet. He slipped his gun in its holster with his other hand.

“What took you so long?” asked Napoleon, glancing behind him at the unconscious thug.

“Yes, well, there was some unfortunate business with a certain chestnut who bit me when I tried to get on the property.” Waverly put his free hand, the one not propping Kuryakin upright, on his tweed waistcoat, absurd in the farmyard scenery. “She’s quite the firecracker. Luckily she accepts bribes.”

Napoleon put two fingers between his teeth and whistled.

Rumpel trotted out from the trees. She went immediately to Illya, just like they’d practiced a million times. He leaned gratefully on her shoulder while Waverly checked Napoleon’s leg over.

“Not broken or sprained, I’m pleased to report.” Waverly patted Napoleon’s chest. “But it’ll hurt like the Dickens tomorrow.”

Napoleon sighed, not quite hiding a relieved grin. “Hurts now.”

“How on earth did you know to come?” asked Illya, naked shock in his voice now that the drama was over.

“Do you really think I sent two of the planet’s best field agents off for retirement without surveillance?”

Illya and Napoleon stared at him.

“Hrm, hrm. As a matter of fact, I did.” Waverly avoided their eyes. “Dreadfully sorry. It’s Faivre the younger we’ve actually been keeping tabs on. We realized he was coming your way for revenge.”

“Bloody glad you did.” Napoleon briefly closed his eyes. “Thank you, sir.”

“I was glad to hear Helen got everything, her husband’s empire,” said Illya.

“As are we.” Waverly brightened. “She’s managing the various companies brilliantly. And, most importantly, she runs them _legally_.”

But Illya had stopped listening when Napoleon fixed his eyes on him. Illya’s lips twisted.

“Help me up,” said Solo at once.

Waverly blustered. “You’ve just been—”

“Help me up. Please, let me go to him.”

The childlike longing in his voice was too much to argue with. Waverly levered him up with a shoulder under the American’s arm. Napoleon didn’t break eye contact with Illya in his limping shuffled across the grass.

Rumpel nickered as they approached.

Usually Napoleon would give her a pat or one of the carrots he kept tucked in his coat pocket.

This time he ignored the world to reach out a hand. Illya met him halfway.

“I’m alright, Cowboy. Look, I can even move my legs a little!”

Napoleon’s face was clothed with its usual professionalism but his breathing hitched. He crumpled the shoulder of Illya’s shirt and tugged him close for a quick hug.

Illya blinked in surprise. Napoleon hardly ever initiated affection, even though they lived in close quarters. His reserved upbringing forced him to show it in other ways, like a soufflé on Illya’s night table or offering to go to the ballet with him.

So Kuryakin reciprocated with enthusiasm, cupping the back of Napoleon’s head, his other hand patting his friend’s back as if to say, _I’m fine, see? And so are you_.

“We went even _more_ soft,” said Illya.

Waverly winked. “Bloody glad you did.”

At the parroted words, Napoleon pulled away to meet Waverly’s eyes. He nodded. Waverly dipped his head in reply.

Rumpel broke up the solemn moment by licking Waverly’s cheek and knocking the glasses clear off his nose. He spluttered even more, letting go of Napoleon to swat the horse away. By the way he rubbed her nose with a coo, he wasn’t fooling anyone.

Illya and Napoleon leaned on each other, on Rumpel, on the promise of it all being over.

“That got the blood pumping again.” Napoleon stretched. He wiped some of the smears off Kuryakin’s face. “Quite literally, I see.”

Illya smiled. “Should we tell him?”

Waverly squinted. “Tell me what?”

“I don’t know.” Napoleon mushed his lips together. “He might rescind it.”

Illya pretended to deliberate this. “Hmm. Good point.”

“Oh goodness gracious, gentlemen, tell me _what_?”

“That we accept,” said Napoleon. “We’ll go.”

“How did you—I didn’t even tell you there was a mission!”

“There is, isn’t there?” Illya prodded.

“Well…yes, I…never mind. But it is still your choice.”

Illya caught Napoleon’s smug eyes. The American reached into his pocket and slid on that signature pair of sunglasses.

The world slotted in place.

“Where are we going, sir?”

* * *

_Three months later…_

“Paris. What more can a man ask for?”

Illya snorted. “So many things.”

“Maybe I just have lower standards.”

“I’m glad you’re finally admitting it.”

Napoleon would have loved nothing more than to slap Illya upside the head. With both hands full, he settled for a glare.

Illya just grinned, eyes trained on the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

Solo placed his espresso down and then a hot cocoa for Kuryakin.

“Spasibo.”

“You’re welcome, silly Slav.”

They sipped their drinks in contented quiet. Even their ear pieces were quiet, no agent chatter.

Illya fingered the seatbelt around his waist with a frown. The cobblestones had been hellish for his wheelchair.

“Easy,” said Napoleon under his breath, chest clenching on his friend’s behalf. “You’ll be on your feet soon enough.”

Kuryakin nodded. He didn’t wear helpless well, didn’t like that he was dependent on a chair to move him around.

“Spasibo,” said the Russian again, sotto voce.

Napoleon kept his face impassive, but his eyes lit up with something fond and secret. “I’d do it all again, even the blowing ourselves up part. You’re not a burden, Illya.”

“And you are always my partner,” said Illya. “No one else.”

Without looking at each other, they clinked mugs.

“_This is all very touching, gentlemen, but our THRUSH suspect is on the move._” At Waverly’s voice, both men moved away from the table. “_Two alleys down. Back quarter. Bring him in._”

Napoleon disappeared, just like they’d planned. He raced to the laundromat across the street, climbing the back stairs until he was on the roof. He immediately flattened to his stomach. The duffel bag was right where he’d left it this morning.

He opened it and twisted three pieces of a small sniper rifle together. In his pocket clinked the same type of bullet that had killed Illya’s mother. He inserted it into the slot, fingering the star shape.

Last came the scope, clipped on the top.

Then…he watched.

Illya left a few bills on the table and began to wheel down the street. He lifted the camera from his neck every few minutes, pretending to take photos. His hands were calloused from pushing thick tires for over a year.

Napoleon smiled at his partner’s oblivious act.

Illya turned down the alley, patting his pockets like he’d lost his wallet. Really, he unbuckled the belt. He tilted so Napoleon could see his lips a little.

“There’s the UNCLE agent.” A man in a crisp suit materialized from the shadows. Napoleon listened to the scumbag through Illya’s earpiece. “Thought you’d been killed, Kuryakin. But here you are on a nice little vacation.”

Napoleon’s pulse seized as three more THRUSH agents appeared.

_This isn’t part of the plan. He wasn’t supposed to be outnumbered._

“Please.” Illya held up his hands. “I’m retired. Just leave me be.”

The THRUSH agent laughed. Unbuttoned his waistcoat. Napoleon tensed, finger ghosting the trigger. “Retired? So you just happen to be in Paris at the same time as my bomb? I don’t think so…”

The man moved to retrieve a gun from his pocket.

Illya _leaped _from the chair. He landed one punch, swept the second man’s leg out from under him, and kicked the third in the chest in under ten seconds. Napoleon never tired of watching the athleticism.

The fourth man lifted a pistol and silencer.

Illya’s eyes widened. “Solo!”

Napoleon saw red. The fourth man folded to the ground. Blood seeped from his chest. Solo hadn’t even felt himself pull the trigger.

“Thanks for the save.” Kuryakin’s brows shot up. “But in the heart? That’s a new one.”

Napoleon’s voice came out hard and unrepentant. “I see you, Peril.”

_At last_. Napoleon’s eyes crinkled in silent joy. _At last…_

“I see you,” Napoleon finished, soft.

Illya began cuffing the three, groaning men. One tried to rear up and Illya dealt him a blow to the head.

Napoleon didn’t like having the Russian out of his sights so he disassembled the rifle in record time. He’d never done it so fast in his life. He took the laundromat two steps at a time. Cars honked when he sprinted across the street.

The echo of clopping shoes preceded Napoleon’s entrance into the narrow alley.

Both stared down at the dead body and three men.

Illya put a hand to his ear. “Suspects in custody, sir. One down.”

“…_Suspects?_” asked Waverly.

“Da. THRUSH agent brought backup.”

“_I thought Mr. Solo was going to be our sniper to subdue the agent, as a threat. You know, shoot the wall ‘so come with us quietly’ and all that?_”

Napoleon’s jaw worked. “He was going to kill Illya.”

“_I see. Good call._”

Solo beamed.

“_Bring them in for interrogation, if you please. I’ll work the clean up._”

Illya shook out his stiff legs.

“That was rather effective,” said Napoleon, impressed. “They thought you a weak babushka. Never saw it coming! We should have you pose as a paraplegic more often.”

Illya rolled his eyes with a squeeze to Napoleon’s shoulder. The therapists had deemed him mostly back in full strength, if a little lower on muscle mass.

Illya left to drive the van around. Napoleon kept his weapon trained on the men, now propped against the brick walls and gagged.

Only once they’d dropped the men off at the drop point, a little office near Versailles, did Napoleon clap his hands, brushing off the day’s unpleasantness. He nearly vibrated with excitement.

Waverly popped out of the door. “Welcome back, agents_._”

Napoleon grinned, shaking his hand. “Thank you, sir. Feels great.”

“Well, boys.” Waverly gave them a little salute. “I’ll call once we have the location of the bomb. What are you going to do now?”

Illya nudged Napoleon, the warmth of it burrowing into Napoleon’s bones. “Banana éclair, Cowboy?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Written November 2016 - 2018.


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